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Passing to Quantity and the quantum, we have to consider the
view which identifies them with number and magnitude on the
ground that everything quantitative is numbered among Sensible
things or rated by the extension of its substrate: we are here,
of course, discussing not Quantity in isolation, but that which
causes a piece of wood to be three yards long and gives the five
in "five horses,"
Now we have often maintained that number and magnitude are to be
regarded as the only true quantities, and that Space and Time
have no right to be conceived as quantitative: Time as the
measure of Motion should be assigned to Relation, while Space,
being that which circumscribes Body, is also a relative and falls
under the same category; though continuous, it is, like Motion,
not included in Quantity.
On the other hand, why do we not find in the category of Quantity
"great" and "small"? It is some kind of Quantity which gives
greatness to the great; greatness is not a relative, though
greater and smaller are relatives, since these, like doubleness,
imply an external correlative.
What is it, then, which makes a mountain small and a grain of
millet large? Surely, in the first place, "small" is equivalent
to "smaller." It is admitted that the term is applied only to
things of the same kind, and from this admission we may infer
that the mountain is "smaller" rather than "small," and that the
grain of millet is not large in any absolute sense but large for
a grain of millet. In other words, since the comparison is
between things of the same kind, the natural predicate would be a
comparative.
Again, why is not beauty classed as a relative? Beauty, unlike
greatness, we regard as absolute and as a quality; "more
beautiful" is the relative. Yet even the term "beautiful" may be
attached to something which in a given relation may appear ugly:
the beauty of man, for example, is ugliness when compared with
that of the gods; "the most beautiful of monkeys," we may quote,
"is ugly in comparison with any other type." Nonetheless, a thing
is beautiful in itself; as related to something else it is either
more or less beautiful.
Similarly, an object is great in itself, and its greatness is
due, not to any external, but to its own participation in the
Absolute Great.
Are we actually to eliminate the beautiful on the pretext that
there is a more beautiful? No more then must we eliminate the
great because of the greater: the greater can obviously have no
existence whatever apart from the great, just as the more
beautiful can have no existence without the beautiful.
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